Success Story

Leadpages Increased CTR on Push Notifications Using VWO

25% Click-through rate

About Leadpages

Clay Collins is the founder of Leadpages, one of the most versatile landing page building tools available today. In an insightful interview with Mixergy, he narrates how he used to give away free templates of landing pages from his blog.

Initially, he used to spend days working on and publishing intense thought pieces on the site. Then one day, he came across Gary Vaynerchuk- entrepreneur and internet personality. Gary would post videos of impromptu wine reviews and garner millions of views just like that. This was miles ahead of the handful of comments Clay would receive on his carefully crafted blog posts.

Soon, Clay adopted the video format and he found more takers for what he was offering. He talked about ‘how the template worked, why it worked and instances where people would want to use it and then gave it away’. This, among other things, eventually lead to the founding of Leadpages.

Today, Leadpages is one of the top startups in Minnesota. They’ve built tools that create launch pages, sales pages, and other conversion pages that enable businesses to grow a devoted audience. Since 2013, they’ve raised $38M in three rounds of funding.

Recently, Leadpages acquired Drip- the much talked-about email automation tool that has been holding its own against the heavyweights of marketing automation.

Goals

Jason Martin joined Leadpages in 2014 when the company had under 50 employees. Jason, as Marketing Project Manager, works on optimising the back-end processes and automation of marketing operations on a daily basis. He also works closely with the publishing and promotion of the Leadpages Blog. To make his job easier, he is always on the lookout for tools that optimize traffic and conversions on the Leadpages website and blog.

Jason came across web push notifications from VWO Engage on the website of ConversionXL. The fact that VWO Engage was built by the makers of VWO, one of the easiest A/B testing tools available to marketers, prompted Jason to give it a try. Leadpages signed up for VWO Engage in April 2016 and has been using it ever since.

VWO Engage Opt-In on the Leadpages Blog

Tests run

Daphne, the copywriter at Leadpages, writes compelling and targeted copy for each notification that goes out. The destination of push notifications sent from Leadpages is a mix of landing pages and blog posts.

Jason was thrilled to see their push notifications getting an average click-through rate of 18%. Although emails are a completely different medium with its own merits, he couldn’t help but observe that push notifications delivered 3X response as that of email. The best CTR they’ve received so far is a huge 25%.

Users visiting the website through push notifications spent an average session time of 2.5 minutes. The bounce rate is as low as 40%.

Over 6,000 subscribers of the Leadpages blog are now subscribers of their web push notifications. “Over 500 email-opt ins can be attributed to VWO Engage. Our data shows that a VWO Engage subscriber is likely to share our destination page, and that referral will convert to a lead,” Jason added.

The notifications that drive instant bursts of traffic are promotional notifications on limited or time-bound offers. Offers like ‘Last day to avail extra template’ send the CTR shooting through the roof.

Conclusion

Currently, Leadpages sends notifications at a frequency of two or three a week. Jason plans to increase the frequency once the segmentation feature is in place. Next, they plan to send specific notifications to special segments created based on marketing campaigns.

The Drip blog has also started sending push notifications by using VWO Engage. They are enjoying growth in opt-in rates similar to that of Leadpages.

PushCrew Opt-In on the Drip Blog

Jason is happy with the numbers. However, he observes that certain standards and best practices should be in place for push notifications. Even though it is a permission-based medium, marketers can bombard their subscribers with notifications if they don’t follow these. Users should be made aware of the unsubscription process as well.

When asked how his experience with VWO Engage has been so far, Jason says, “VWO Engage is a great way to interact with your audience in a timely manner and see immediate results. Its user retention and reengagement capabilities are strong.”